On Wednesday, October 7, 1998, Matthew Shepard was found tied to a fence on the Wyoming prairie, barely alive, his skull fractured and his brain stem crushed. Comatose, he was taken first to a Laramie hospital, then to a better-equipped one in Fort Collins, Colo., where he died five days later. We may never know what his killers, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, intended to do when they first approached Shepard at Laramie’s Fireside Lounge. We only know that, whatever their intention, they ended up murdering him.
Almost instantly, his death became a flash point in this country’s reckoning with gay people, and the cute, clean-cut 21-year-old became a symbol of the ravages of intolerance. The tragedy sparked vigils around the world and led to federal hate-crimes legislation that bears Shepard’s name, currently pending in Congress. (Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama has promised to sign the bill if elected.)
Shepard’s impact can also be felt in the work of the Matthew Shepard Foundation, headed by his mother, Judy, whom we spoke with for the following oral history -- along with friends and Laramie residents; the police chief who oversaw the investigation into the murder; and artists influenced by that tumultuous week.
JUDY SHEPARD
When we got the phone call, they talked to my
husband, Dennis. We lived in Saudi Arabia at the time.
They just let him know that Matt was in the hospital
and that his condition was critical.
TIFFANY EDWARDS HUNT, former Laramie
Boomerang reporter
I was in the newsroom. I
had the afternoon/night shift, and I heard some things
on the police scanner. They had scrambled it, so I was
trying to understand what kind of code they were
talking. I had a vague idea of where they were because
there’s a bike trail out there. I remember
thinking, Oh, I wonder if this is a university hazing.
REVEREND ROGER SCHMIT, then-pastor of St.
Paul’s Newman Center in Laramie
I got a
phone call from parents of a university student. They lived
very close to where Matthew [was found], and they said
something like, “This is probably going to end
up in your lap: They just found a student really
injured badly. Seems to have been beaten out there at that
fence.” Somehow they knew he had a University
of Wyoming student I.D. card. Later I called the
hospital and found out they had already taken him to Fort
Collins.
ROMAINE PATTERSON, Shep-ard’s friend; now a
Sirius OutQ show host
I was working at a gay
coffee shop in Denver that Matthew had frequented.
[Shepard lived in the city briefly before enrolling at the
University of Wyoming.] One of our regular customers
called and left a message for me to watch the evening
news. He had seen a story that a young man named
Matthew Shepard had been in a fight or something in Wyoming.
The idea that Matt was in an altercation seemed absurd
to me; I thought he must have a broken arm. I watched
the news and called my sister Trish, who lived in
Laramie. She said, “These two guys took this kid out
to the boonies and robbed and beat him really
horribly, and now he’s probably going to
die.” I said, “I think he might be my
friend.”
SHEPARD
We didn’t have any information. But I was
pretty sure that someone had beaten him up because he
was gay.
DAVE O’MALLEY, then–Laramie police
chief
Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson had
been involved in a serious aggravated assault on two
Hispanic guys that we had investigated the night
before Matt was found. During that investigation
Matt’s bank card was found in McKinney’s
truck. About 18 hours later we got the report from a
young man who had been riding his bicycle in the country and
had found Matt tied to a fence there.
PATTERSON
I called all our mutual friends and after that
was just alone with my thoughts. The early reports
gave some of the basic information: He had been left
overnight in the cold, he was possibly beaten with a
baseball bat, his body was covered with red welts, he
had possibly had his skin burned. I spent that first
night just reliving what must have happened. I cried a
lot. I didn’t sleep.
JIM OSBORN, Shepard’s friend; then-president
of the University of Wyoming’s LGBT organization
I got an e-mail from friends who had been in contact with
[police chief] O’Malley. They said that it
could be a hate crime. I immediately got a second
e-mail saying, “Don’t say anything to anybody,
because we don’t want to compromise the
investigation. We’re still trying to piece
together where Matt was.” I said, “I need to
talk to somebody, because I know where he was Tuesday
night: He was at the LGBT meeting with me.”
BOB BECK, Wyoming Public Radio news director
and University of Wyoming journalism instructor
A
student in my broadcast news class called and said he needed
to go to the hospital in Fort Collins. We had a major
assignment due, and I said, “You’d
better have a damn good reason.” He said, “I
can’t tell you, but you’re probably
going to report on it: A friend of mine was seriously
beaten up.”
CATHY RENNA, then-director of community
relations for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against
Defamation
I was in Washington, D.C. I started
getting all these e-mails and phone messages. We heard
from people across the country; they were outraged.
EDWARDS
The day after Matt was discovered there was a
joint press conference between the police and the
sheriff’s department, and they’d distributed a
press release. After reading it I was motivated to ask,
“Do you think this is a hate crime?” The
sheriff’s deputy said yes. The Denver Post
called me that night, and they asked me what went on
at the press conference. I told the reporter that the
sheriff said it was a hate crime. They published that, and
that’s when the floodgates opened.
BECK
We were covering it like a murder. When
you’re in Wyoming, you don’t have more
than 15 [murders] a year. Then to go to the press conference
and hear the sheriff call it a hate crime -- whoa.
We’d never had anybody refer to anything in
Wyoming as a hate crime.
JONAS SLONAKER, current Laramie resident
I
was 42 then. A friend of mine called me up and said,
“Did you hear about Matthew Shepard? This kid
was severely beaten because he was gay.” I was
getting ready to move from Laramie. When it happened I said,
“Oh, I’m glad I’m getting out of
this place.”
OSBORN
Thursday night I started getting phone calls
from the campus paper. By the next day we were getting
phone calls from Dateline NBC and Good
Morning America.
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